Adult Social Care | CQC's First Inadequate Council Rating Raises Systemic Practice Concerns

Adult Social Care

Welcome to Adult Social Care, your weekly newsletter offering the latest insights, strategies, and innovations empowering leaders to navigate challenges and drive excellence in the UK’s adult care sector. We're committed to keeping you informed and inspired with fresh ideas to tackle the year ahead. Heads up! To ensure you continue receiving our newsletters, please add [email protected] to your contact list!

⏱️THE MINUTE READ

Humber & North Yorkshire ICB’s Productivity Journey with Agilisys QuickAction

Are your ICB meeting minutes and administration cumbersome and limiting engagement? ICB’s are an important part of the local authority care environment but administration is holding them back. ​

We caught up with the Humber and North Yorkshire ICB team and explored how they are using AI tools like the Agilisys Platform tool to streamline administration and meeting minutes with AI. ​

Are you interested in exploring how AI can support your administration processes particularly in the healthcare space – explore some example tools here: Agilisys Meeting Minutes Tool | Agilisys

📌WEEKLY MUST-KNOWS

REGULATION AND QUALITY
CQC Issues First Inadequate Rating For Council Adults’ Services
CQC’s first ‘inadequate’ judgment of a council under the new local authority assessment regime goes to Blackpool (score 34/100), citing a crisis-intervention model, weak prevention/reablement and a culture of making decisions for people. This sets a precedent for tougher scrutiny on strengths-based practice and equality of provision. Senior leaders, DASS and commissioning teams should anticipate sharper challenge and prepare targeted improvement plans.

TECHNOLOGY AND ETHICS
Gender Bias Found In AI Tools Used By Councils
LSE research shows a widely used LLM (Google’s Gemma) downplays women’s physical and mental health issues in generated case summaries, creating unequal descriptions of otherwise identical needs. With over half of councils using LLMs to support social workers, this poses material legal, safeguarding and procurement risks. Councils and providers should mandate model transparency, bias testing, and Equality Impact Assessments in AI deployments.

WORKFORCE AND IMMIGRATION
Work Visas And Migrant Workers In The UK
Migration Observatory analysis shows Skilled Worker visas peaked in 2023—72% in health and care—then fell sharply in 2024 after a care sponsorship crackdown and higher salary thresholds. The pipeline for international recruitment in adult social care is tightening despite demand pressures. Workforce plans should pivot to retention, productivity, and domestic training pathways while stress-testing provider capacity.

⚡QUICK READS

£30m Additional Funding For Welsh Councils To Cut Discharges: Wales releases £30m to local authorities to reduce delayed hospital discharges, signalling near-term investment in reablement, home care capacity and step‑down provision. (More)

Wolverhampton’s Digital Adult Social Care Project Shortlisted Nationally: National recognition points to maturing, scalable digital practice models in adult social care—useful momentum for local transformation roadmaps. (More)